In 2536, Jun and the other Spartan-IIIs of Alpha Company underwent physical augmentations aboard UNSC Hopeful,[12] though complications with Jun's augmentations nearly crippled him. Nonetheless, Jun recovered and graduated from training alongside his peers in late 2536, at the age of twelve.[1]

Early military career

"By my estimation Jun is a rationalist. He is also a Spartan."

—Colonel Urban Holland during his evaluation of Jun-A266's military career[10]

Following his graduation, the Spartan-IIIs were placed under the authority of the Navy's Naval Special Weapons within the UNSC Special Forces. Jun proved to be one of the Spartan-IIIs' best assets, standing out from his peers within Alpha Company and attracting the attention of Kurt and Mendez. Like a number of other Spartans who showed particular promise, Jun was removed from Alpha Company's mainline deployment roster and his skill as a sniper soon had him leading a Headhunter team conducting missions directly for the Office of Naval Intelligence. Though he rarely speaks of this period, his performance was exemplary, as Jun was responsible for tracking down and assassinating a number of insurrectionist leaders who broke the tentative ceasefire between the United Nations Space Command and insurgent factions after the Covenantattacked the Outer Colony of Harvest in 2525.[1] Because of his special assignment, Jun and a handful of other Spartans did not accompany most of Alpha Company to their demise in Operation: PROMETHEUS.[13]

Fall of Reach

That day, NOBLE Team was sent to investigate a disturbance at the Visegrád Relay on Reach. During the operation, Jun spotted targets for the team from a UH-144 Falcon, providing intel on enemy and friendly troop deployments. After they were engaged by Covenant forces, Jun, Emile, and Kat flew directly to the relay to get it operational and send a message to Holland, informing him that the Covenant had discovered Reach.[18] Two days later, the team was deployed to defend ONI's Sword Base near the Babd Catha Ice Shelf, which was under attack by Covenant forces. While Kat and SPARTAN-B312 were defending the base's exterior, Jun and the rest of the team made their way to the base's main atrium. After the main threat was neutralized, the team was debriefed by Doctor Catherine Halsey.[19]

Jun and Noble Six overlooking a Covenant encampment.

On August 12, Jun and Noble Six, designated Recon Team Bravo, participated in a reconnaissance operation to assess the Covenant force deployments in the Viery Territory on Reach, with some support from the local militia. They made their way through several Covenant outposts and discovered a Covenant stealth pylon, to which Jun planted an explosive charge. They then proceeded further into Covenant-occupied territory and discovered a massive Covenant ground force deployed by the Fleet of Valiant Prudence massing on a plain in the valley below. They informed Command and mounted a counter-attack the next morning.[17]

Afterward, NOBLE Team split up, performing different operations to defend the planet. When most of the NOBLE Team members went to Farkas Lake to initiate Operation: UPPER CUT to destroy CSO-class supercarrierLong Night of Solace, Jun, in a Falcon, extracted Carter and Kat from the YSS-1000 Sabrelaunch facility while Jorge and Noble Six participated further in the operation. While the operation proved successful, Jorge died when he sacrificed himself to blow up the supercarrier from within. However, his death proved to be in vain as a much larger Covenant fleet arrived at Reach directly after.[20] Jun participated in the following Siege of New Alexandria on August 23. He and NOBLE Team later regrouped in the now-compromised Olympic Tower in the city, where Holland assigned the Spartans were destroying Sword Base which the Covenant now occupied. Just then, the Covenant began glassing the city dangerously close to NOBLE Team's position. As the Spartans fled, Kat was killed by a Sangheili marksman. The survivors attempted to kill the Sangheili, to no avail. On August 26, NOBLE Team emerged from a fallout bunker beneath the ruins of the Olympic Tower to be picked up by a Pelican.[21]

On August 29, the remaining members of NOBLE Team arrived at the Covenant-occupied remnants of Sword Base; they were to demolish the base in order to prevent Halsey's excavation data from falling into Covenant hands. Jun, Emile, and Carter remained in a Falcon while Noble Six and a team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers eliminated a pair of Type-38 Tyrant anti-aircraft emplacements. After the cannons were disabled, NOBLE Team fought their way into the interior of the base. Once they arrived at the designated coordinates, which seemed to be a dead end with no load-bearing structures, dumb AIAuntie Dot revealed that the team had been given a new objective. They were to rendezvous with Halsey over a kilometer away and two thousand feet below ground. The team soon arrived at the crash site of a Forerunnervessel beneath the ice shelf. Halsey insisted upon the importance of the site and demanded NOBLE Team's support while she completed transferring critical data in her laboratory. Jun and the other Spartans defended Halsey's lab from several waves of Covenant forces, who had found an entrance to the ruins. Eventually, Halsey ushered the Spartans inside, where she revealed the data she had transferred: a fragment of the smartartificial intelligenceCortana that carried a "latchkey" discovery found from within the ruins. She ordered NOBLE Team to escort the package to UNSC Pillar of Autumn, a Halcyon-class light cruiser that was drydocked at the ship-breaking yards in Aszod preparing to depart from the planet.[22]

Once the team emerged from the cavern below Sword Base, Carter had Jun escort Halsey to the relative safety of ONI's CASTLE Base. Jun was ordered to protect Halsey and prevent the secrets she possessed from falling into Covenant hands.[22] He was gone by the time Spartan-II Red Team arrived the next day.[23] At some point just before the fall of the planet, he first encountered Gunnery SergeantEdward Buck of the 11th Shock Troops Battalion.[24] Through unknown means, Jun eventually escaped Reach, the sole survivor of NOBLE Team.[1]

A new class of Spartans

Jun recruiting Sarah Palmer for the SPARTAN-IV program.

"Most of them are alright, Musa. And they'll get better. But some of them… some of them are much better."

Following the end of the Covenant War, Jun was selected to lead the development of the SPARTAN-IV program, alongside Commander Musa-096. Technically retiring from active service and becoming a civilian, Jun served as the SPARTAN-IV program's head recruiter.[1] In January 2553, he met with ODST Lance CorporalSarah Palmer aboard Lockhart medical station and recruited her into the first class of Spartan-IVs.[8] On February 15, 2553,[26] Jun traveled to the colony of Sundown in a shuttle to personally offer Edward Buck a place in the first class of Spartan-IVs. Much to Jun's surprise, Buck declined the offer, as he felt that he might have to abandon his team and his girlfriend, ONI CaptainVeronica Dare. Buck became the first prospect to decline Jun's offer and the only one to do so within the first class of Spartans.[27]

Once several members of the first class were recruited and augmented, Jun and Musa's first test for the new recruits was an obstacle course in which Palmer dashed ahead to the objective, leaving her outnumbered comrades behind to be stunned into submission by UNSC Marines participating in the course. Jun and Musa's first lesson to the ambitious recruit was to never seek glory for oneself and stick with one's team. Several days later, Jun and Commander Thomas Lasky gave the same recruits a tour of the UNSC Navy's experimental flagshipUNSC Infinity, still undergoing the final stages of its construction within the Sol system's Oort cloud. During the tour, a group of insurrectionists of the New Colonial Alliance disguised as a construction crew boardedInfinity and took Captain Andrew Del Rio and Infinity's bridge crew hostage, taking the ship's AI offline. The leader of the group, Ilsa Zane, threatened to depressurize the ship and kill everyone aboard if anyone tried to retake the bridge. Though they were not officially authorized to do so, Jun reluctantly allowed the Spartan-IVs to access the second generation Mjolnir armor stored on the ship in order to help the Spartans retake the bridge from the NCA.[25]

After the Spartan-IVs donned their new armor, Jun explained Zane's background: she was the only survivor of a secret, prototypical phase of the SPARTAN-IV program. Although her physical augmentations are superior to those of the mainline Spartan-IVs, they also made her mentally unstable, resulting in her defection to the NCA. Detecting several Spartans making their way to the bridge of Infinity, Zane depressurized S-Deck, sending several crew members into space with Lasky and Jun being saved by Palmer and Spartan Edward Davis. While Palmer and Davis made their way to the bridge, Jun and the others engaged NCA forces. Eventually, the Spartans eliminated the rebels and retook Infinity. Afterwards, Musa went before a board of Navy officers and announced the establishment of the Spartans as their own distinct branch.[28]

Administrating the Spartan branch

In 2554, the success of the first class of Spartan-IVs allowed Musa to fund further classes and Jun was charged with recruiting more soldiers into the program. Considering his inability to recruit Buck into the first class to be a personal failure, Jun sought him out at Leeward's bar in Karnak on the colony of Draco III. The two shared baijiu together to honor the recently-deceased rookie of Buck's squad. Buck maintained that his answer was the same a year later until Jun informed him that the increased funding in the program allowed for the remainder of Buck's team to become Spartans alongside him. With his largest concerns alleviated, Buck decided to join the program.[29] Jun later contacted and recruited Kojo Agu and Michael Crespo, a squad members of Buck's, into the program.[30]

As the training of the second class of Spartans had begun, Jun and Musa relocated with them to a UNSC space station in orbit over a dwarf planet. Shortly after the Spartan-IVs received their augmentations, Jun was informed that one of the trainees, Hideo Wakahisa, did not return from his training exercise. Jun went looking for him and found Wakahisa dead in the tunnels of the training arena furthest from the entrance. While Jun searched the area for evidence, he called in a medical team to remove the body and had the station's administration team search the training recordings to remove most trainees from suspicion. Afterwards, Jun and Musa confronted Buck, Crespo, and Agu in their quarters, as the Spartans were still listed as possible suspects. Jun revealed that he had found a medallion belonging to Crespo, but the latter and his friends insisted that he was not responsible for the murder. Crespo noted that he kept the medallion in his locker—which he never locked—and he believed someone stole it from him. Musa sent Jun to search the security footage of the locker room to find any further leads. Jun was then ordered to assign the three Spartans to temporary quarters and ordered them to remain in the room until further notice.[31]

Further investigations soon proved that Spartan trainee Rudolf Schein was responsible for the murder. Jun, Musa, and Captain O'Day went to confront him, but Schein was waiting for them in the station's recreational room and threatened to blow up the entire station unless his demands were met. Musa managed to turn off the station's artificial gravity, which caused the explosives' switches to falter and prevented all the explosives in the station from detonating. Just as Musa shut off the gravity, Jun charged at Schein and knocked the grenade out of his hand, though the terrorist still succeeded in detonating the grenade and the resulting explosion killed O'Day and damaged the viewport in the room. As Jun and Schein brawled, they smacked into the viewport and it shattered, pulling them into the vacuum of space. Once Jun was clear of the air escaping the station, he kicked off of Schein's chest and propelled himself back toward the station, leaving the turncoat Spartan-IV to die of vacuum exposure. Lucy-B091 and Tom-B292, who were serving as trainers for the Spartan-IVs aboard the station, witnessed Jun's brawl with Schein from a window and quickly rushed to the older Spartan's aid. Tethered to an airlock, Tom launched himself at Jun in the vacuum and managed to grab hold of him just as Jun lost consciousness, while Lucy used the tether to pull both men back inside the station.[32] The three Spartans were promptly brought to the station's infirmary,[33] and recovered from their exposure to space in several days.[32]

Personality and traits

Calm and well-practiced,[37] Jun is regarded as "rock solid under pressure" and not arrogant about his exceptional skills as a sniper.[10] Though he is confident in his skills as one of the best marksmen within the entire United Nations Space Command,[2] Jun is reluctant to boast such. Somewhat a loner by nature, Jun competes only with himself and feels as if he has little time for trivial personality conflicts that impede efficiency.[1] Generally unusual for a Spartan, Jun is intriguingly conversational[37] and rather talkative during missions, sometimes to a degree considered against noise discipline protocols within the UNSC. However, this is often overlooked in the field by his peers, due to the informational bent of his chatter.[10] Though Jun is quite vocal and unafraid to speak his mind, he is always tightly focused on the mission at hand. Some have mistaken this character trait for a deep philosophy, but in truth, it is more pragmatic than mystical.[1] Jun is known for remaining unwaveringly composed, even under the highest of pressures.[7] However, Jun is not one to show mercy to his opponents; Musa-096 believed he would assuredly have killed a former ally who betrayed him and defected from the UNSC.[38]

During his service on NOBLE Team, he formed bonds with several of his teammates, particularly Jorge-052.[20][21] In turn, Jun witnessed the death of many teammates and, by the end of the Fall of Reach, Jun was the fireteam's only survivor.[6] While he appeared regretful of their deaths, he did not seem to show any emotion when speaking of them.[27] As a Spartan-III who served throughout much of the Human-Covenant War, Jun had become accustomed with loss and witnessed some of the best and brightest of humanity's youth be sacrificed—sometimes pointlessly—for temporary gain in the war.[1] With the Covenant War's end, Jun was selected to lead the development of the SPARTAN-IV program, alongside Musa-096. While the SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III programs illegally conscripted children to serve as supersoldiers, the Spartan-IVs would be selective, consenting adults, which Jun considered an excellent side effect.[27] Jun views the Spartan-IVs and Spartan Operations itself as a necessary compromise between the creation of child soldiers and the need for supersoldiers in an extremely dangerous galaxy. While serving as the head recruiter for the SPARTAN-IV program, Jun conducts himself professionally and portrays himself as perpetually somber. Jun takes his duties as head recruiter and training overseer with deadly seriousness, and is uncompromising in his review process of potential Spartan inductees.[1][27] Though Jun personally recruited Spartans into the program that have eventually gone rogue or failed the training process, to outsiders he often seems unconcerned. However, only Musa is aware that Jun secretly takes even those events as evidence of the success of the SPARTAN-IV program, as those men and women had a choice as to what they would eventually become.[1]

Jun has shown symptoms of post-traumatic stress in the past and had underwent therapy to counter it; by 2550, Jun has shown no indications of a relapse post-therapy. In a mandatory psychiatric evaluation on December 15, 2549, Jun was noted as having "an unhealthy emotional detachment in regards to the consequences of his actions". ColonelUrban Holland, who later evaluated the members of Noble Team, disagreed with this assertion, commenting that Jun is both a rationalist and a Spartan.[10] Jun rarely speaks of his service as a Headhunter early in his career.[1]

Skills and abilities

Jun sniping from a UH-144 Falcon.

"Jun, Noble Three. As a sniper, his skills are unmatched."

—Doctor Catherine Halsey, speaking of Jun's skills during his time on NOBLE Team[39]

Talented with long-range combat, Jun is considered to be one of the recognized masters of the SRS99-AM sniper rifle within the UNSC. With the dedicated skill he brings to the task of serving as a fireteam's marksman, Jun is able to remain still for incredibly long periods of time.[7] Even as a civilian, Jun does not hold back from combat when the need to fight a threat arises. When UNSC Infinity was boarded by the New Colonial Alliance in 2553, Jun aided in combating the insurrectionists and retaking the ship, despite being unarmored.[28] Later in 2554, when Spartan-IV trainee Rudolf Schein defected to the United Rebel Front and attempted to take an entire space station hostage while donning an explosive bandoleer, Jun charged at the Spartan and successfully engaged him in hand-to-hand combat. The two were eventually knocked into the vacuum of space, though Jun managed to use Schein to propel himself back toward the station, enabling him to be rescued in time; Musa-096 later commented that Jun—as a Spartan-III—was built to last.[33]

Aside from his combat skills, Jun's ability to maintain situational awareness and predict enemy behavior is particularly notable, as is his attention to detail while he conducted overwatch operations. Even after retired and becoming a civilian, Jun's perceptiveness and ability to discern motivations from seemingly casual contact is considered almost preternatural. Jun often downplays this ability, describing it as a combination of simple deduction and great skill at being able to lip-read, or mandible-read, in the case of Sangheili.[1]

Physical description

By 2552, Jun stood at 210.5 centimeters (6 feet and 10.9 inches) and weighed 111.1 kilograms (245 pounds).[2] He has a shaved head and blue eyes, with brown eyebrows. He has a tattoo of a fist clutching three arrows on the left side of his face.[3]Edward Buck noted that Jun carried himself with a quiet power that reminded you that he could "kill everyone within sight in a matter of seconds".[27]

Equipment

"High velocity, armor-piercing. They'll take the hat off an Elite at two thousand yards. And they ain't cheap."

Behind the scenes

In Halo: Reach, Jun was voiced by American actor Sunil Malhotra.[41] Jun serves as a supporting character in Halo: Reach, though his voice can be used in the game's Firefight mode for 10,000 credits. Jun's helmet is available as an avatar award and is obtained by killing 100 enemies in a row without dying in either campaign or Firefight. This is the easiest avatar award helmet to unlock, due to the invulnerability option in Firefight.[36]

Jun becoming a recruiter for the SPARTAN-IV program was first teased in the Xbox Live Marketplace's description for the Commander Palmer Armor avatar, in July 2013.[42] Prior to the release of Halo: Initiation in August 2013, which confirmed and expanded on this information, there existed numerous discussions involving Jun's fate following the events of Halo: Reach. As Jun is not mentioned in Halo: First Strike, fans long speculated that he was killed between the events of "The Package" and the novel. In the Halo: Reach Legendary Edition developer commentary, Martin O'Donnell and Lee Wilson jokingly state that "the sequel" tells the story of Jun and Halsey's escape, and of their children, who are "very smart snipers". At Comic-Con 2011, Frank O'Connor stated, "Jun's fate may not ever be discovered." During Halo Waypoint's exploration and background explanation on the Defiant Map Pack, three dead Spartans wearing armor identical to Jun can be seen in the remains of a destroyed Pelican on the level Highlands.

Jun is the protagonist of the fan-made graphic novel Halo: A Fistful of Arrows, written and drawn by Levi "Leviathan" Hoffmeier,[43] which is named in reference to Jun's tattoo. In a conversation between Bungie employee Martin O'Donnell and Hoffmeier on the halo.bungie.org forums, O'Donnell joked that "[...] Jun tripped and broke his neck on the way to escorting Halsey off Reach [and] he's dead." Hoffmeier then drew a short comic strip depicting the event.[44] 343 Industries later referenced A Fistful of Arrows in a Q&A session in their Canon Fodder blog, stating that "the details of [Jun's] survival and escape from Reach remain buried under fistfuls of black ink and red tape."[45]